First, my apologies for not getting back with you folks sooner. Last Saturday I got stuck at work handling something that kept me for seven more hours (9 more than planned) and never got to that local HiFi Buys. Easter Sunday followed with HiFi Buys (HFB, aka Tweeter) being closed.
Yesterday, a friend and I went to the one and only HFB in north Georgia that had the Yamaha DPX-1000. The environment was dramatically different from what I was use to for a HFB. The room was what appeared to be a flat midnight blue paint, but I could be wrong on this. The door leading into the room had no windows and painted flat black.
The only light infiltration coming into the room was from the cracks in the double-doors leading into the room (especially at the floor) and from LED's on the component equipment off to the left wall. Although ceiling lights were installed, no controls for them were made available.
The sources equipment included a Samsung SIR-T160 HD-DBS receiver and a Denon 1600 DVD player. Both were feeding via component cable into a B&K 507 receiver. I have no clue what the speakers were and didn't really care as that was not why I was there. The screen was a Stewart Grayhawk (110" 16:9), which was just plain wrong for this technology.
My friend and I brought four movies, and the store complimented this with two more. They were:
The 9th Gate (for shadows and dark scenes)
Moulin Rouge (for colors)
Superman (bad attempt at a panning movie)
The Matrix (perceived blacks)
The HFB also brought Austin Powers: Goldmember (colos)
xXx (whites and perceived blacks)
Initially, we found the DPX-1000 to have been setup with the White Level and Black Level set to -20, and the Iris was set to Normal (Standard?) mode instead of Cinema mode. We sat about 18' from the screen, but I could not easily tell pixel structure unless I was within about 6'.
My whole purpose for being there was to evaluate contrast, black details, and perceived blacks. Now, please forgive me if I unintentionally confuse some by those three terms, and especially if I am misusing them. With this in mind, I explain how I am interpreting them:
Contrast: the ability to resolve and reproduce definition of two two discernible shades of the same color. Instead of 16 colors, I want 16 million of them. If I can get 16 million shades of gray from 0.00001 IRE to 99.99999 IRE the wonderful.
Black Detail: The ability to reproduce the source material's detail in dark and verk dark scenes, and to inhibit the unnatural tendencies of crushing blacks. I love blacks and want a detail-less black of space to be black as can be, but if there is detail there I wanna know about it by seeing it.
Perceived blacks: The ability to fool my mind with blacks in scenes that have highlights, scenes that are not very dark, or daytime outdoor scenes with black suits/paint/latex in them looking really good as black objects and not dark gray objects.
Now, call me Joe 6-Pack and I'll look your way as this is how an untrained consumer is seeing things
his way. Now, the first DVD we looked at was The 9th Gate. I know this movie as I've seen it about 8-10 times on my CRT-based RPTV. In dark scenes it was as expected with gray-blacks and crushed near-blacks.
Ok, so kick this CRTer in the head for that last comment, but also realized that I acknowledged its the way the setup was presented and not mutually exclusive to the projector itself. Read on! After some disappointment with much of the scenery in the 9th Gate we put Moulin Rouge in.
Probably one of the better DVD's for color testing is Moulin Rouge, IMHO. The DPX-1000 did a wonderful job according to my eyes and the reds, greens, and blues came out the their vibrant and bold presence. Although I was not presented with the 3D film-looking appearance, I cannot help but continue to wonder if it was the settings in the projector and the negative gain screen hurting this experience.
So, we popped in Superman for some pans. Ok, Hollywood was not doing much in terms of high-speed panning, and the inherent softness in Superman only served more to irritate the demonstration than help it. I did love those colors, though. So, I cannot say that I've tested and panning, and no forced testing of rainbows resulted in seeing them.
We then stuck the Matrix in and watch some of the scenes, and again all the blacks were either crushed of gray-blacks. At this point my friend chose to excuse himself for biological reasons (no, the projector didn't make him sick, but rather nature was calling). At this point I chose to ask for the projector's remote and discovered the above information (-20 on white/black level, Standard-mode Iris, etc.).
I then proceeded to set the black and white levels to Zero, forced the Iris to Cinema mode and was surprised at the resulting Matrix scenes. When my friend returned to the room he was equally surprised at the better blacks and contrast. We continued forward and pushed the while level to +20 and the sharpness (which was found at -16) to +10 and a whole world of difference could be scene.
The perceived blacks of Trinity's black latex outfit on the roof's building top after the helicopter crash, and the hallway shootout scene earlier) were simply stunning. If this is what it means to fool
my brain into seeing blacks this way then KUDOS!!!
BTW, both my friend and I knew there was 'something' wrong in the projector's setup when the black portions of the projector's menu presented better blacks than anything those DVD's had shown before we started changing the projector's settings. Evidently, the video settings for the menus are completely different from the source signal. The black portions of the menu (black-colored blocks with either dark gray or white-font lettering) were fantastic.
Well, after realizing that a professionally calibrated projector probably would get my friend 100% to his demands for a great projector (and me about 95%, but I'm a CRTers and expect blacker than blacks) we chose to look at some HD source material.
With this in mind we changed the source to the Samsung HD receiver and put HDnet on. During this time the scenes looked cropped. At first we thought it was the projector, but then realized that it was the T160 set to 4:3 Zoomed mode. Ok, an idiot set this stuff up. We placed the T160 into a proper 16:9 mode and the fashion show that was on (about 1PM EST) was incredible.
Not only was the sharpness, detail, and colors all in place to make this appear to be the best dang DLP projector I've seen to date, but the blacks in some of the clothing (obviously perceived blacks with all the ambient light on the day-time runway) were really black.
Being that our brains can be fooled into thinking we are seeing 0 and 5 IRE blacks (yes, the T160/DPX-1000 were set to 0 IRE black, thankfully) when there is a lot of light, I wonder how a Firehawk screen would help with the presentation in dark scenes with the white levels on the projector restored to 0 (remember, I pushed them up).
Now, a couple of things puzzled all those in the room. First, while watching some individual at a podium (something about WHO/SARS), on the left side of the individual's leading edge there was a blue trace. It was almost like EE, but EE is usually not overlay-ed onto the image, but rather creating a halo-style artifact, right? This was almost like a coloring book where instead of black lines defining where the colors should stay within the lines were blue, and only on the left-hand side of the leading edge.
Initially, I thought this phenomena that was presenting itself only on the 'people' in the scenes (this is still HDnet), but soon realized it was on inanimate objects as well (and only on their left-side leading edge). I do not know if this was the result of the source material (HDnet), the receiver (T160), transport (component video from T160 to B&K 507 to projector), or the Input/Projector.
I have previously seen this blue EE on fixel-pixel displays on small laptops playing some DVD's. I do not know what it is, what is causing it, but this 'condition' did not seem to present itself with other materials from HDnet, nor in DVD's. As a side note, I did notice a white 'halo' in the first white-room scene of the Matrix, where Neo is being introduced to the virtual work. I will have to test this on my Panny 56 to see if I see it there also (meaning its the source).
Well, after all of this (2.5 hours) fun we left with some really positive results. We talked about the projector, what we saw, etc. over some good seafood. Then, we got another hair-brain idea to go have a look at the Marantz VP12-S2 and Sharp 10000 for comparison. The Marantza also looked wonderful, it was used in conjunction with a Firehawk and in a room with sconces at 20-30% maximum lights, and playing some wonderful HDnet material (via DISH).
The Sharp 10000 seemed to look less than stunning and I think it was because it was on a Grayhawk screen that was left over from when this other shop had a 9000 installed. But, I do not want to go into the Marantz and Sharp solutions as that is the intent of this post. So, if you have questions, please ask them.
I can say that yesterday was a day I really enjoyed. Now, if I can just get my hands on a great deal for the DPX-1000 ...
